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predecessor of Schutzbund

...was tightly organized, having been created in 1923 from the workers’ guards by the Austrian Social Democratic Party, of which the Schutzbund remained an adjunct. It was also descended from the
People’s Guard of 1918, a Social Democratic weapon against the Communists; it considered as its main objective the protection of a social reform program hated by Austria’s conservative bourgeois...

role in Austria

...end of March 1919. The Austrian Social Democrats were determined to resist bolshevism with their own forces without making an alliance (as the German Social Democrats did) with the old order. The Volkswehr (
People’s Guard) was organized and was twice effective (April 17 and June 15) against communist attempts at a putsch. Bauer and fellow socialist leader Friedrich Adler staked their...